page_title: Iodine
section_title: Properties
hierarchical_section_title: Iodine / Properties
caption_attribution_description: Ball-and-stick model of the unit cell of iodine. Crystal structure data from Wyckoff (1963) Crystal Structures - Second Edition, Volume 1. John Wiley, New York. Image generated in Accelrys DS Visualizer.
context_page_description: Iodine is a chemical element with the symbol I and atomic number 53. The heaviest of the stable halogens, it exists as a lustrous, purple-black non-metallic solid at standard conditions that melts to form a deep violet liquid at 114 degrees Celsius, and boils to a violet gas at 184 degrees Celsius. However, it sublimes easily with gentle heat, resulting in a widespread misconception even taught in some science textbooks that it does not melt. The element was discovered by the French chemist Bernard Courtois in 1811, and was named two years later by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, after the Greek ἰώδης "violet-coloured".
  Iodine occurs in many oxidation states, including iodide, iodate, and the various periodate anions. It is the least abundant of the stable halogens, being the sixty-first most abundant element. It is the heaviest essential mineral nutrient. Iodine is essential in the synthesis of thyroid hormones. Iodine deficiency affects about two billion people and is the leading preventable cause of intellectual disabilities.
  The dominant producers of iodine today are Chile and Japan. Iodine and its compounds are primarily used in nutrition.
context_section_description: Iodine is the fourth halogen, being a member of group 17 in the periodic table, below fluorine, chlorine, and bromine; it is the heaviest stable member of its group (the scarce and fugitive fifth halogen, the radioactive astatine, is not well-studied due to its expense and inaccessibility in large quantities, but appears to show various unusual properties due to relativistic effects). Iodine has an electron configuration of [Kr]4d¹⁰5s²5p⁵, with the seven electrons in the fifth and outermost shell being its valence electrons. Like the other halogens, it is one electron short of a full octet and is hence a strong oxidising agent, reacting with many elements in order to complete its outer shell, although in keeping with periodic trends, it is the weakest oxidising agent among the stable halogens: it has the lowest electronegativity among them, just 2.66 on the Pauling scale (compare fluorine, chlorine, and bromine at 3.98, 3.16, and 2.96 respectively; astatine continues the trend with an electronegativity of 2.2). Elemental iodine hence forms diatomic molecules with chemical formula I₂, where two iodine atoms share a pair of electrons in order to each achieve a stable octet for themselves; at high temperatures, these diatomic molecules reversibly dissociate a pair of iodine atoms. Similarly, the iodide anion, I⁻, is the strongest reducing agent among the stable halogens, being the most easily oxidised back to diatomic I₂. (Astatine goes further, being indeed unstable as At⁻ and readily oxidised to At⁰ or At⁺, although the existence of At₂ is not settled.)
  The halogens darken in colour as the group is descended: fluorine is a very pale yellow gas, chlorine is greenish-yellow, and bromine is a reddish-brown volatile liquid. Iodine conforms to the prevailing trend, being a shiny black crystalline solid that melts at 114 °C and boils at 183 °C to form a violet gas. This trend occurs because the wavelengths of visible light absorbed by the halogens increase down the group (though astatine may not conform to it, depending on how metallic it turns out to be). Specifically, the violet colour of iodine gas results from the electron transition between the highest occupied antibonding πg molecular orbital and the lowest vacant antibonding σᵤ molecular orbital.
  Elemental iodine is slightly soluble in water, with one gram dissolving in 3450 ml at 20 °C and 1280 ml at 50 °C; potassium iodide may be added to increase solubility via formation of triiodide ions, among other polyiodides. Nonpolar solvents such as hexane and carbon tetrachloride provide a higher solubility. Polar solutions, such as aqueous solutions, are brown, reflecting the role of these solvents as Lewis bases; on the other hand, nonpolar solutions are violet, the color of iodine vapour. Charge-transfer complexes form when iodine is dissolved in polar solvents, hence changing the colour. Iodine is violet when dissolved in carbon tetrachloride and saturated hydrocarbons but deep brown in alcohols and amines, solvents that form charge-transfer adducts.
  The melting and boiling points of iodine are the highest among the halogens, conforming to the increasing trend down the group, since iodine has the largest electron cloud among them that is the most easily polarised, resulting in its molecules having the strongest van der Waals interactions among the halogens. Similarly, iodine is the least volatile of the halogens. Because it has the largest atomic radius among the halogens, iodine has the lowest first ionisation energy, lowest electron affinity, lowest electronegativity and lowest reactivity of the halogens.
  The interhalogen bond in diiodine is the weakest of all the halogens. As such, 1% of a sample of gaseous iodine at atmospheric pressure is dissociated into iodine atoms at 575 °C. Temperatures greater than 750 °C are required for fluorine, chlorine, and bromine to dissociate to a similar extent. Most bonds to iodine are weaker than the analogous bonds to the lighter halogens. Gaseous iodine is composed of I₂ molecules with an I–I bond length of 266.6 pm. The I–I bond is
caption: Structure of solid iodine
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